Cullen
Murphy has a great article about the Inquisition. His story is
a troubling one for us in India, where we are at the point of
transition from persecution by thugs to persecution by competent
organisations.

Wikipedia
has serious problems, an article in the Chronicle
Review by Timothy Messer-Kruse. My experiences have also been
similar; I've given up on fixing errors in Wikipedia because
people generally undo the work later on.

"How your cat is making you crazy" was quite a revelation on how the world is much more complex than what how we think it is. The surprising thing is that the parasite changes human behavior. I inferred that, as explained by the classic theory of evolution, the parasite "has become intelligent".

Was governance ever good in India? It has been on a continuous decline from Independence till now. That's my opinion of course. The spurt of growth that was seen for a short while in the mid-2000s was simply the product of a credit bubble. From reading the story of Kingfisher Airlines and of course the many other scams, its more that clear that things had been going bad at a faster rate during the go-go years.

I am reminded of your fear about prospects for economic growth in India. At that time it was more academic. But the whole picture is increasingly looking like a prolonged slump and when compared to the kind of growth rates we absolutely require to sustain living standards and provide employment, looks like a mild economic depression.

I would argue that there is an oversupply of criticism when it comes to the Chinese economy. There are American professors working in China who have been predicting doom in China since 2001. Meanwhile, economic busts have come and gone in the US and Europe. It seems like the Chinese are much more tolerant of foreign critics living in their own land. But it might be because these critics publish themselves in the English language. Anyway, there is no hysterical reaction that we have come to expect in India.

On the other hand, India has been pumped up as the next economic and geopolitical superpower by the financial elite of the West. We know very well that they were lying all through the way.

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